Living past 100, new protectionism, “fake” foreign firms - 5 quick insights

1. Many more people are living past 100

I’ve been reading an interesting book called The 100-year Life (Lynda Gratton & Andrew Scott) which delves deeply into the implications of more people living much longer lives. The authors say that a child born in the West today has a 50% chance of living to 105. More than a century ago the odds were 1%.

The growth of centenarians is already having practical impacts. The Queen still writes to people who turn 100 but it takes seven people to deal with the cards now, compared to just one a decade ago.

Up until 2015 the Japanese Government gave a silver sake dish to everyone who turned 100. In 1963 they gave out 153. By 2014 the number had risen to 29,350!

2. The rebirth of protectionism?

A Griffith University forum held in Brisbane this week asked the question: “Is Globalisation in reverse.” It produced some interesting insights.

Professor Tony Makin, who heads up Griffith’s APEC Study Centre said, although globalisation had produced winners and losers, the figures suggested a net sum gain and more than one billion people lifted out of poverty globally as a result.

Despite this, since the global financial crisis hit in 2008, G20 countries had implemented another 1200 restrictive trade measures and were still introducing another 17 per month.

3. The tragedy of America’s loss of industry jobs

At the same Griffith forum, and on a different note, Morgans Financial Chief Economist Michael Knox cited research looking at the employment and social impact from the lowering of trade protection in the United States 17 years ago.

Since then, six million American manufacturing jobs disappeared. Over the same period, the death rates among poorly educated, white US males across all age groups had risen from 700 per 100,000 to almost 1000.

It is probably not too hard to see where Trump voters came from.

4. Hidden foreign firms

Another speaker at the globalisation forum was Professor Sara McGaughey from the Griffith Asia Institute. She concluded that, on most measures, global connectedness was still increasing, particularly when it came to information sharing.

She also gave some details of new research suggesting the level of foreign ownership of corporations might be significantly underestimated. Most people use the IMF level of 10% or more foreign ownership to identify a foreign entity. However, with many multinational companies, you might have to follow seven links around the world to find the “ultimate owners”, in some cases even 15 steps. The real level of foreign ownership could be twice as high as previously thought.

5. Smart technology in manufacturing

I was fortunate last week to visit Watkins Steel in Brisbane which recently won the Lord Mayor’s Business Award for digital adoption. Watkins steel has introduced “mixed reality” into the steel fabrication process and is using automated robotics to link all three of their machines into a single line. The result is a faster speed to market and a precision that reduces product risk. Although the company has introduced greater automation, its workforce is still growing because the business is expanding rapidly off the back of the improvements. Win win. Smart.

Comments in these posts are personal and not necessarily related to my day job. Ai Group is Australia’s peak industry organisation, providing members with policy leadership, influence and networking, as well as a broad suite of expert advice services and training across workplace relations, industrial relations, health and safety, compliance and legislative change.